Dark Star

by Bethany Frenette

  ***

  “That doesn’t bode well,” I told Gideon as I got into his car. The early air was cool, but I felt the humidity in it, the threat of heat to come. The end of summer was still dragging its heels, even though the trees had all gone orange and brown and the streets were littered with leaves.

  “What?”

  “A Talk,” I said. “Capital A, capital T.”

  “Sounds like someone’s in trouble.”

  I sighed. I had an idea what it was about. Mom’s partner-incrime-stopping, Leon, thought I shouldn’t be telling fortunes at school. And he’d been rather vocal about it recently. “Leon’s trying to get me to stop bringing my Nav cards to school. He says people will ask questions.”

  Gideon shrugged. “It’s not like you’re telling the future,” he said, pulling onto the highway that ran past our houses, toward Whitman High. It was after eight. We’d be twenty minutes late even if he sped, which Gideon never did.

  Starting the week with a tardy notice and yesterday’s jeans: another thing that did not bode well.

  As for telling the future . . .

  “I’m not,” I agreed.

  “You can’t do that, can you?”

  “I predict this will not be the last tardy notice we receive from Whitman,” I said. I didn’t tell him about my dream, the void that pressed in on me, a night without moon or stars. That had felt like some sort of future, sitting out on the horizon, waiting.

  “What’s Leon’s problem, then?” Gideon asked.

  “He says I’m using my powers too blatantly.”

  Powers. That was what Leon called my Knowing. What he called my mother’s strength, and his own bizarre ability to transport himself various places. Lately I’d been wishing he would accidentally teleport himself somewhere very far away. Like maybe the sun.

  “You’re not selling fortunes for lunch money or anything,” Gideon said. “Besides, no one takes it seriously.”

  “And even if they did believe it, they’d think it was the cards, not me.”

  Gram had given me my Nav cards five years ago. There were only a few dozen sets of the cards in the world, she told me, and half of them had been lost. She had one of two sets located near the Astral Circle—and she had given me hers.

  Gram always told me our abilities were gifts. She thought they should be encouraged, treated with reverence. The Nav cards were a way to enhance my Knowing: a deck of fifty-one cards that allowed me to focus my thoughts and energy into a particular task.

  I liked to see into people, and it didn’t seem likely anyone would start asking questions. Except for Gideon, I hadn’t told any of my friends about my Knowing—and most of the other students at Whitman High already thought I was weird.

  Which was actually becoming more depressing by the day.

  Aside from a brief stint of popularity in middle school, I was once again known only as Gideon Belmonte’s Best Friend. Not that Gideon’s likability had done him much good. The girl he was convinced was his soul mate was the one girl who barely knew he existed: Brooke Oliver, a beautiful blond Barbie doll of a girl. I’d thought they were supposed to start making them look like real people, but apparently Brooke hadn’t gotten the memo.

  “Are you even paying attention?”

  I looked up. We’d pulled into the parking lot at Whitman, and Gideon was frowning my way. The lot was empty except for a few stragglers and two boys sneaking cigarettes behind the cars.

  Coils of smoke drifted up in the early light. “What? Sorry.”

  “Zombie Audrey rises again.”

  I touched my hair. The ponytail had it somewhat contained, but the clinging heat made its curl turn to frizz. “I’m not that bad. What were you saying?”

  “Friday? Drought and Deluge? Tink said you weren’t sure, since you were trying to get the cabin.”

  “Oh. Yeah, I can be there. It doesn’t seem like Mom is going to change her mind.” The Drought and Deluge was a club downtown that allowed minors every Friday, served watered-down soda, decent appetizers, and less-than-decent music. I wasn’t a great dancer, but when it was dark and crowded enough, it didn’t really matter.

  “And she said something about wanting to talk to you in Homeroom.”

  “Which we’ve already missed,” I pointed out as Gideon pulled into an empty parking space. “You should really let me drive.”

  “I will. Once you get a car. Or, you know, a license.”

  “Corner backing is a completely made-up skill,” I countered. “It shouldn’t even be on the test.”

  “Don’t feel bad. Not everyone can fail a driver’s test three times. That takes real talent.” He put his car into park. The engine made a long, rattling gurgle, and Gideon patted the dashboard fondly.

  “At least I don’t drive like I’m ninety,” I shot back, hopping out of the car before he had a chance to respond.

  I looked at my watch as we hurried toward the office. It was the beginning of first period—precalculus with Mr. Alvarez. I sighed. Mr. Alvarez wasn’t known for being overly charitable, and he tended to smell like chalk, two things that put him low on my list of favorite people. And even though he was only in his mid-twenties—the youngest teacher on staff—he didn’t seem to remember anything about attending high school. He delighted in destroying egos and piling on homework.

  So I wasn’t surprised that when I entered the room, trying to slip quietly to my seat in the back, he looked at me and said, “Nice of you to join us, Whitticomb. Oblige us, if you will, by solving the problems on the board.”

  I grimaced and walked to the blackboard. I still felt rattled from my dream, and the numbers before me were a blur, just a series of slashes and curves, nothing that formed any sort of pattern. It might not be fire and destruction, but this was enough like a nightmare that I glanced down to make sure I was still fully clothed.

  “Whitticomb?”

  “Just checking,” I mumbled.

  I couldn’t even delight in the fact that Mr. Alvarez had already ruined his dark pants with chalk.

  3

  Whitman High was a large school, and growing.

  The dark brick building had been constructed back when my grandmother was still a young girl; by the beginning of my junior year, it seemed the school wouldn’t be able to hold all of its students much longer. As a result, the lunch area was usually overrun, and the inner terrace crowded. Trying to weave through the obstacle course of chairs and unruly jocks meant keeping a tight grip on your tray and praying to keep your balance. I picked my way carefully through the throng, because dropping a hamburger on my shoes was exactly what this day didn’t need.

  The horror of Precalc had been followed by eleventh grade English. Ms. Vincetti had forced us to read our essays aloud in small groups, and I was stuck with the most boring girl on the planet and a boy whose cute-but-befuddled head never managed to absorb even the most basic rules of grammar. Surviving till lunch had seemed an impossible task. Reaching our table unharmed was nothing short of a miracle.

  I set my tray down and sat beside Gideon, pressing my head to the table. Probably not my smartest idea: the tables were always sticky. Across from us, Tink had already abandoned her food and was busy reading a gossip magazine.

  Gideon tugged on my ponytail. “What’s wrong?”

  “Math teachers are evil,” I groaned. “And inhuman.”

  “Well, that one is,” Tink agreed.

  “If there’s any justice in the world, he’ll spend his next life as a toothbrush.” Or a gym shoe. Or a stick of gum. Or maybe really old lettuce.

  “I keep telling you to switch into my class,” Tink said. She was basically a genius when it came to math, but she’d had an infamous altercation with Mr. Alvarez late last year and transferred into a section she liked to call Addition for Idiots. Now she spent her class time playing games on her calculator and writing lurid romances in the margins of her notebook.

  “This is why I stopped after trig,” Gideon said. He tugged at my ponytail aga
in. “Come on, sit up. You’re gonna get ketchup on your face, and you’re already a disaster area.”

  I stayed where I was. “Maybe someone will mistake it for blood and they’ll send me home.”

  “Or they’ll assume you’ve been feasting on brains.”

  That made me lift my head. “What is with your zombie fixation today?”

  Before he could answer, Tink pulled my tray away and thumped her fist on the table. “I know what will cheer you up! Do a reading for me. I want to know if I should ask out Greg.”

  “I don’t know why you bother asking,” I said. “Even if I tell you no, you’ll do it anyway.”

  “Sure, but this way I’m prepared.”

  Tink was notorious for going through boyfriends. She had more of them in a year than most girls do throughout all of high school. I could predict without needing any sort of Knowing exactly how this next relationship of Tink’s would go: a month of delirious giggling and nonstop chatter, followed by a shiftiness in her eyes, a tendency to pull her hand from his, a week of unreturned phone calls—and three days of me trying to assure the victim that it wasn’t his fault and Tink still liked him as a friend.

  But I did want to do a reading. I pulled out my cards and began to shuffle while Tink closed her eyes and leaned forward in her chair, drumming her fingers on the table. As I shuffled, I focused, studying her. Her fingernails were painted pearl, all except the pinky finger on her left hand, which she had a habit of gnawing on. With her eyes shut, I could see a smear of shimmer powder across her eyelids.

  Once upon a time, Tink had been named Tina. Or, to be more accurate, Christina. But somewhere along the way, she had become Tink. The fact that she was blond, barely over five feet, pencil-thin, and pixie-haired made it seem as though her mother had given her the wrong name at birth, and Tink had simply been waiting for people to realize it. The sprinkling of glitter she always wore was just icing.

  “I’m waiting,” she said, opening one eye to peek at me.

  “Quiet. The mysteries of the universe must not be rushed,” I told her, but I finished my shuffling and began to deal.

  The first card I dealt was number fifty. The Inverted Crescent. My readings always began with this card; it represented me and helped me to orient myself. I placed it in the center and drew the next card. Card fourteen. The Mapmaker. In readings for Tink, this one represented her.

  The rest of the reading was a jumble.

  No reading was ever perfect. My Knowings weren’t consistent, even with the cards. Proximity was a factor, as was my relationship to the subject; the bond of family was strongest, but friendship helped. Even then, Knowings came to me differently. Sometimes they came as images or impressions, sometimes in fragments and words—or just a sense, distant and indefinable. Gram told me consistency would come with experience, but so far, all I’d learned how to do was focus on a single subject, and I couldn’t even always do that. The cards helped. It wasn’t like envisioning the future, or listening to thoughts. It was about becoming attuned to everything around me: motion, silence, the curve of a hand, scents in the air. My Nav cards adjusted my frequencies. And this one was coming up static.

  I bit my lip, frowning over the cards. This happened on occasion with Tink’s readings—noise I couldn’t sift through, little flashes in the dark, hints of almost-something that slid out of reach. Something secret. Something hidden. For someone so open and friendly, she could be annoyingly difficult to read.

  This time, however, the problem wasn’t Tink. The problem was around us.

  It wasn’t any specific person. There was no location I could pinpoint, no emotion I could name. It was broader than that. Friction in the air, tension I’d been too preoccupied to notice. For a second, my dream flashed before me—the city, a rush of color, the scent of blood—and then darkness. I shivered. I let my hands idle on my cards. I’d lost my concentration and couldn’t get anything at all from Tink.

  “That bad?” she asked, wrinkling her nose. “What, does he have too many toes?”

  Gideon paused in the middle of chewing his hamburger. “Is that a deal breaker?”

  “Depends on how many.” She took a moment to consider this, then turned to me. “How many?”

  I was no longer in the mood for the reading, but Tink was expecting something. I tucked my cards into my bag and shrugged. “Just the ten,” I answered. “Unless some have fallen off. That’s the problem—he’sundead.”

  “That does seem to be going around,” Gideon remarked.

  Tink threw a fry at me. “You’re hilarious.”

  “Even worse? He has a summer job as a rodeo clown.”

  Tink had a horror of rodeos. She refused to discuss it. She crossed her arms and glared at me. “Your cards told you he’s an undead rodeo clown.”

  “With an unspecified number of toes,” Gideon added, grinning.

  “I need better friends,” said Tink.

  “You love us,” I countered.

  Tink responded by giving me the finger. “I’m still asking him out,” she said. Then, with an exaggerated sigh, she went back to her magazine.

  I turned away. My senses were still on alert. Taking a long breath, I tried to filter the chaos around me. The lunch room was loud, but the friction I’d felt was still there, beneath the noises. Here and there, I caught hints of it: murmurs, furtive glances. I twisted in my chair, scanning the room. There was definitely something going on. It was more than just the anxious, expectant air. Nearby, several students leaned in close across tables, speaking in hushed, excited voices. And—there. Clustered near the door, a group of freshman girls stood crying.

  “Did something happen?” I asked, nudging Gideon with my elbow.

  “Like what?” Tink looked up from her magazine, tilting her head as she surveyed the room. The chatter around us had increased in volume, and a small crowd was forming around the crying freshmen.

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t have asked.”

  “Hmm,” she said, leaning forward on her elbow and staring directly at the throng.

  I shook my head at her. “You’re so subtle.”

  Tink was never one to be out of the loop. After a moment, she jumped up and announced, “I’ll go find out.” With remarkable ease, she pushed her way into the crowd where a few of our friends stood whispering.

  Once she left, Gideon asked quietly, “You all right?”

  “I just have this uneasy feeling,” I said. Though I told him about my Knowings on occasion, this wasn’t one I could easily articulate.

  “Something in your reading?”

  “More like outside of it.”

  Gideon didn’t press the issue. I picked at my food, waiting for Tink to return, but I didn’t have much appetite. The disquiet wouldn’t leave me. That was a problem with Knowing: sometimes I couldn’t turn it off, even when I wanted to.

  By the time she returned to our table, Tink had lost her usual cheer. If I hadn’t been alarmed before, I would have been now: she’d gone from sunny to somber in the space of a few moments. Her face was pale, her eyes lowered. She slid back into her seat, not speaking, and began fidgeting with her book bag.

  Gideon and I exchanged a look.

  “Tink?” I asked.

  What happened then wasn’t like Knowing. My senses didn’t clear; the fragments didn’t align; that friction remained just at the edge of my focus, like sounds heard underwater. Instead, I felt a pinch of dread in my stomach at the look on her face, the way her eyes wouldn’t meet mine. She spoke softly, but her words sliced through me. I knew what she was about to say.

  “It’s Kelly Stevens. They found her.”

  Her body, Tink meant. They’d found her body.

  Kelly had been in the grade behind us. I hadn’t known her well—I’d spoken to her maybe twice, and for the life of me I couldn’t recall what our conversations had entailed. But she’d been pretty and popular, and when she’d gone missing in July, all of the local news networks covered the story. She had disappeared som
ewhere in the stretch of half-light between seven and ten p.m. one hot summer night. A slender silver sandal was found near a park bench, straps twisted, scuffed with dirt. Nothing else.

  They’d searched the entire metro area and the woods north of her home, checked nearby lakes and the river. The Cities united, holding candlelight vigils in the steamy blue twilights that lingered in late July; there’d been nothing like it since that string of murders the year before I was born. No trace had been found of her. Rumors but no suspects. Kelly had simply vanished. She’d fallen into the blank haze of the relentless summer heat.

  And now she’d been found.

  “Where was she? Do they know what happened?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but something—some morbid curiosity, maybe—pressed me to ask. None of us had really believed they’d find her alive, not after all this time, but it was unsettling to have suspicion become fact.

  Before Tink could answer, something else caught my attention. Another twinge of Knowing, brief but potent. A girl had paused by our table. I turned, and for a moment she met my gaze. She looked as though she might speak, and then her eyes flicked past me. She hurried away.

  Iris St. Croix, the new girl in school. I wondered, briefly, if she’d known Kelly. I didn’t think so. She’d only transferred to Whitman at the beginning of the year. But then again, maybe she had: the sense I’d gotten from her was vague, confused, but strikingly sad.

  I watched her go. She was short, and her dark hair so long it reached her hips, though not in a messy way. The sweater she wore was at odds with the unseasonable heat. But there was something else that made her stand out.

  At her throat, she wore a necklace I hadn’t seen before, but with a symbol I knew. A pendant with the triple knot. It was the sign of the Astral Circle, Gram had told me. I knew it for another reason.

  It was the symbol printed on the back of each of my Nav cards.

  4

  A cop was standing at my front door when I got home from school.

  I’d seen Detective Wyle before, and I recognized him even before he flashed his badge at me. He stood half hidden in the shadow of ivy that hung over the lattice, tapping his foot against the stone walkway. I studied him as I approached. His face was carefully blank, but there was a certain tension in his stance. Other details, I’d noted before: the fading sunburn on his forehead, the worry lines around his eyes. He was maybe forty-five, a few years older than my mother; good-looking, for an older guy. He had that dark and mysterious tortured-soul thing going for him, which normally would’ve made me think he might be a good match for my mom. She tended to date men who were terminally boring and thus unlikely to think her anything but quirky. It always ended badly. But Detective Wyle also wore a wedding band, so that was out.